Why HTML-to-CSV is hard by hand
An HTML table is not just text — and CSV does not tolerate sloppy text either. Three things almost always go wrong when converting manually:
⎣ Commas inside cells
A cell like „1,234.56“ or „Springfield, IL“ breaks the column structure — unless the cell is correctly wrapped in quotes.
↵ Line breaks in cells
Cells with line breaks snap rows apart if they aren't escaped per RFC 4180. The file looks fine in a text editor and is broken in your spreadsheet.
🨀 colspan and nested markup
Headers spanning multiple columns, bold text, links and nested elements produce extra columns or empty fields when treated as plain text.
How to do it
The free Clean Copy web tool converts HTML tables to correct CSV directly in your browser.
1. Get the table's HTML
Right-click the table → Inspect
→ right-click the <table> element → Copy → Copy outerHTML.
(Alternatively: Ctrl+U and find the <table> block.)2. Paste and pick CSV
Go to /clean-copy-tool, paste the HTML,
and click "CSV" as the output format.3. Save as .csv
Copy the result into a text editor and save it as
competitor-prices.csv. Or paste straight into Excel /
Google Sheets — Data → From text/CSV reads it automatically.✅ RFC 4180-compliant
Cells with commas, quotes or line breaks are quoted and escaped automatically — the file opens cleanly in any spreadsheet.
🧹 Just the table
Prose, menus and ads outside the table are dropped whenever a table is present in what you paste.
🔒 100% local
The conversion runs in your browser. Your data never leaves your machine.
Your options compared
| Method | RFC 4180-safe? | Catch |
|---|---|---|
| Manual copy-paste | No | Commas and line breaks wreck the columns |
| The site's own export button | Sometimes | Rarely exists; often locked behind a paid plan |
| Python script (BeautifulSoup) | Yes | Requires coding and environment setup |
| Clean Copy web tool — CSV mode | Yes | None — free, no install, runs locally |
Use it often? There's also a browser extension, a CLI tool and an Obsidian plugin powered by the same CSV engine.